Around Town: Miss Audrey Hepburn Discovers Bear

Our canine companion, a Labrador retriever named Miss Audrey Hepburn, has a new love interest.

Her first love was Dune, the deployment dog, who was temporarily assigned to La Cañada Flintridge during his mom’s deployment to Afghanistan in 2007. Both Miss Hepburn and Dune were heartbroken when their sojourn concluded. Once separated, they moped for months.

                   
But now, in her dotage, Miss Hepburn has perked up. She has a crush on the star of the hit TV show, “Person of Interest.” Her new love is a canine actor named Graubaer's Boker, who plays the character Bear. His supporting actors are Reese, Finch, Carter and Detective Fusco.

It’s good for a dog star to have some humans in the supporting roles.

Unlike Miss Hepburn, Graubaer’s Boker has a long genealogy. Miss Hepburn’s antecedents are currently unknown. Due to the lineage, Graubaer’s Boker has one of those unwieldy purebred monikers. That’s why he’s adopted the code name Bear.

Despite their different backgrounds, Bear and Miss Hepburn have common interests. They both engage in social media, including Twitter and Facebook. Since he is a world-famous actor, Bear also has a Wikipedia page. Miss Hepburn, alas, does not. At least, not yet.

Bear is much younger than Miss Hepburn. He was born in 2009. Miss Hepburn has been with us since April 2004, but she won’t tell us her real age. Dune, the deployment dog, was born in late 2004. Miss Hepburn likes younger, frisky males.

Bear is not only frisky, he is a manly dog. He is a Malinois Belgian shepherd. Dogs of that breed are good at detecting explosives, bombs and narcotics. They can also track escaped prisoners.

Bear first appeared on the show as an attack dog, rescued from Aryan Nationalists. The plot advanced when Bear chewed up $1 million in stolen bearer bonds, hence the nickname, Bear.

Bearer bonds are rare these days. Since the 1980s, a series of statutes and regulations have limited the use of these unregistered bonds, which have no value if eaten by a dog. Nowadays, financial risk-takers invest in initial public offerings, like Twitter. They say that Twitter will be hard to value due to the anonymous accounts, often held by hard-working canines.

Miss Hepburn is good at tracking chocolate. One year, she ate a chocolate cake that had been left on the top of the refrigerator. The next year, she ate several chocolate bars. Both times, we rushed her to the TLC 24-hour pet clinic. The vets were happy to see her and the visits helped with their kids’ college tuition.

Like Miss Hepburn, Bear is a trend-setter. Until he came along, the lead characters in “Person of Interest” were merely human. Now, hundreds of thousands of Americans tune in simply for a glimpse of Bear, just as millions go to Twitter to follow Miss Hepburn. As New Yorker cartoonist, Peter Steiner, famously penned, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

Valley Sun Column
Orlando Sentinel



ANITA SUSAN BRENNER is a longtime La Cañada Flintridge resident and an attorney with Law Offices of Torres and Brenner in Pasadena. Email her at anitasusan.brenner@yahoo.com and follow her on Twitter @anitabrenner.